Haven’t Raised Your Prices Lately? It May Be Time You Did

Virtually all restaurants have experienced cost increases for certain food items, energy and other operating costs this year. If you haven’t raised your menu prices lately and your profit margins are down, it may require raising some menu prices to get back on track.

Some menu experts say to only increase menu prices surgically, meaning just a few items at a time, never across the board. When you raise prices on the entire menu, more people tend to notice and you risk complaints and resistance. They say it’s better to have a 3 or 4 surgical price increases during the year than one that affects nearly everything on the menu.

There is one exception to this. If you have a lot of menu item prices that end with 5 consider rounding everything up to 9. For example, $2.95 becomes $2.99, $5.25 becomes $5.29 and so on. A 4 cent price bump may seem minor but all those 4 cents go straight to your bottom line. It’s also a price increase that few customers are likely to notice.

If you haven’t raised your prices lately take note – your costs have probably gone up and there’s only so much you can do in terms of cost cutting and efficiency to make up for it. When you get too far behind the pricing 8-ball you start losing money and then it can be very hard to catch up

Haven’t Raised Your Prices Lately? It May Be Time You Did

Virtually all restaurants have experienced cost increases for certain food items, energy and other operating costs this year. If you haven’t raised your menu prices lately and your profit margins are down, it may require raising some menu prices to get back on track.

Some menu experts say to only increase menu prices surgically, meaning just a few items at a time, never across the board. When you raise prices on the entire menu, more people tend to notice and you risk complaints and resistance. They say it’s better to have a 3 or 4 surgical price increases during the year than one that affects nearly everything on the menu.

There is one exception to this. If you have a lot of menu item prices that end with 5 consider rounding everything up to 9. For example, $2.95 becomes $2.99, $5.25 becomes $5.29 and so on. A 4 cent price bump may seem minor but all those 4 cents go straight to your bottom line. It’s also a price increase that few customers are likely to notice.

If you haven’t raised your prices lately take note – your costs have probably gone up and there’s only so much you can do in terms of cost cutting and efficiency to make up for it. When you get too far behind the pricing 8-ball you start losing money and then it can be very hard to catch up